"New Pattern, New Dynamics - Economic Voice Dialogue Economist" Dialogue with Ba Shusong: What new issues need to be solved urgently for the development of the digital economy?

Beijing, January 21, 2020 The 2020 Central Economic Work Conference stressed the need to vigorously develop the digital economy and increase investment in new infrastructure. Specially planned "New Pattern, New Dynamics - Economic Voice Dialogue Economist", launched on the 21st: What new issues urgently need to be solved in the development of the digital economy? ——Dialogue: Ba Shusong, Executive Director of HSBC Institute of Finance, Peking University and Chief Economist of China Banking Association.

<b>Reporter: How</b><b></b> do you understand the two professional terms <b>of "</b>digital <b>industrialization" and "industrial digitalization</b>"<b>? In terms of the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, what specific paths do you think we have to achieve? </b>

Bashusong: Industrial digitalization, my understanding is that the real industry should combine the characteristics of the digital economy and use its new tools to achieve digital transformation. For example, new energy vehicles, we believe that the more traditional industries combine the digital economy, and use 5G networks, big data, artificial intelligence, etc. to achieve digital transformation. For example, Tesla, the world's largest automobile company by market capitalization, if it realizes digital transformation and upgrading through the combination of digital economy, after realizing autonomous driving, it will become a highly data-based mobile office space, on which users can handle daily affairs through a large display, which will become an entrance to a lot of traffic.

Can it be achieved? We'll see, but at least that's what everyone expected. Many industries will undergo such a digital transformation, that is, industrial digitalization. Digital industrialization means that the digital economy itself is a very important industry that drives economic growth, and it will bring a lot of investment in related new infrastructure industries. According to relevant forecasts and research reports, we see that some forecasts say that the GDP increase brought about by the application of industrial Internet-related investments from 2019 to 2024 can account for 13% of the overall GDP increase.

This is the digital industrialization formed around investing in the digital economy and driving related investment, which has slowly become a very important force driving the entire economic growth. At a time when other industries are affected by the epidemic, it has become an important industry and growth driver supporting economic growth.

<b>Reporter: China's digital economy is now second only to the United States in global development. From your observations, what problems do you think we still need to solve in the future development of the digital economy? </b>

Bashuson: There are several aspects of our problem, such as data, how to clarify its ownership? For example, the user's online shopping and trading behavior, these data itself is generated by the user's own transactions, but now the ownership of rights and interests is owned by the trading platform, it is possible to form a monopoly of the platform on the data in the digital economy era. Should it be considered that consumers themselves should enjoy the ownership of this part of the data? At the same time, more and more transactions are being conducted over the network, migrating from offline to online, so network security has become very important.

Moreover, the Internet naturally has a characteristic - "winner-take-all", which is prone to data monopoly. Once dependence and monopoly are formed, it is often necessary to subsidize the market with low prices first, squeeze out peers, and then continue to raise prices. How to prevent this monopolistic behavior? To prevent this "winner-take-all" data monopoly, it is necessary to maintain the openness and competitiveness of data, which can avoid the weak position of consumers in front of the data platform to a certain extent.

At the same time, the data economy has a characteristic - natural openness. When cross-border transactions are conducted through e-commerce platforms, cross-border flows of data are inevitably involved. How to establish laws and regulations, regulatory systems, and rights protection between cross-border flows, and coordinate the relevant issues between cross-border data flows? I think this is a new topic that the rapid growth of the digital economy has brought to us while bringing economic growth momentum and promoting transformation.

Chief planner: Yang Chunyang

Producer: Ke Chengyun Han Zhifeng

Reporter: Li Shuo, Tang Ming

Anchor: Yang Fujiang Li Lingrui

Source: CCTV Central Radio and Television Central Broadcasting Economic Voice